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Tech talk takes over at pair of conferences [Las Vegas Business Press](Las Vegas Business Press Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Techies converged on Las Vegas earlier this month for a one-two punch of gizmo-related conventions. Held the same week, the 2012 National Association of Broadcasters Show and Microsoft Corp.'s management summit for information technology professionals filled the Strip and surrounding areas with the latest media technology. Projects still in development were featured in NAB's International Research Park, while both conferences offered attendees the latest information about cloud computing. The 2012 National Association of Broadcasters Show attracted 92,112 participants and 1,600 exhibitors to the Las Vegas Convention Center from April 14-19. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority estimated the 2012 NAB show had a nongaming economic impact of $122.2 million for the city. NAB's International Research Park featured emerging technologies from academic, governmental and private labs, including representatives from Ryerson University in Toronto. Undergraduate computer science student Wyatt Rivers exhibited his camera tracking application that uses the Xbox Kinect's functionality to determine where points are in space. Then, using a pan-tilt-zoom camera, he can center, and follow, a subject in the frame. Rivers said his product received a high amount of attention and that many people asked him when he would be commercializing his technology. "It's not quite at that stage yet, it's just sort of been a research project," Rivers said. "There's still a lot of work to be done on it before it can be something that'd be available to the market." Carmen Branje, a doctoral candidate at Ryerson, demonstrated his device, an instrument designed to deliver vibrations that you feel rather than hear, to give media accessibility to hearing-impaired users. To accomplish this, Branje connected sensors to a chair that vibrates when an attached keyboard is played. Elsewhere in Research Park, the National Institute for Information and Communication Technology, a Japanese research lab, presented a 200-inch, glasses-free 3-D projection system with a display large enough that 30 people can watch simultaneously. Also, Korean researcher ETRI demonstrated its SMART Mobile Hybrid DMB Technology, a hybrid radio and television broadcasting system. Down the way a bit from Research Park, the Cloud Computing pavilion at NAB grouped together a half-dozen companies offering cloud servers, including CloudSigma. "There's a major shift going on from what we see in terms of the media content business. Traditional ways of doing things are just not economical and not feasible, and there are a lot of aspects of content management and work-flow that is moving into cloud infrastructure," CloudSigma Vice President Jack Duffy said. Microsoft drew 5,000 information technology specialists to its annual Management Summit at The Venetian April 16-20. Cloud computing was the conference's central theme. During one of his keynote speeches at the summit, Brad Anderson, Microsoft's corporate vice president of security and management, spoke of the challenges IT professionals face as smart devices grow in popularity. Employees want to use their personal phones, tablets and laptops for work, and companies have to figure out how to sacrifice control. The benefit to an increase in connectivity, as evidenced by the 916 million smart devices shipped last year, is employees can essentially work 24/7 because their phones and tablets are always with them, Anderson said. "Users are demanding more flexibility," he told the crowd of tech workers. "You have the opportunity to be more than just the desktop administrator." Anderson revealed the next version of Windows Intune at the summit, which lets IT managers connect Windows, Google Android and Apple iOS devices to the cloud. Microsoft also launched its System Center 2012, which expands the Windows data center to the cloud. (c) 2012 Las Vegas Business Press |